Creativity Quote by Benny Goodman

Goodman frames quitting as a kind of improvisation: if you want an exit, you can riff one into existence. The line is deceptively plain, but it lands because it refuses the romance of “overcoming adversity” and instead points to the cheaper, more common story we tell ourselves - that stopping is just realism. In his view, obstacles aren’t rare villains; they’re the default weather. What changes is the listener’s ear: you can tune your attention to every sour note and call the whole set doomed, or you can treat the noise as part of the arrangement and keep playing.

The subtext is less motivational-poster and more bandstand pragmatism. Goodman came up in an era when musicians were ground down by travel, precarious pay, and brutal gatekeeping; add to that his reputation as a hard-driving perfectionist and a pivotal figure in an industry shot through with segregation and ego. “The obstacles are all there” reads like a knowing shrug from someone who’s watched talent stall out not just from lack of ability, but from the endless, accumulating friction of the job: bad gigs, bad timing, bad luck, bad nerves.

His intent is to puncture the idea that persistence requires perfect circumstances. He’s warning that excuses are abundant and often convincing, precisely because they’re true. The trap isn’t that the reasons are imaginary - it’s that they’re limitless, and you can always arrange them into a convincing finale.